The beginning of South East Asia: Myanmar (Burma)

After a tearful goodbye to our home for a year we began an incredible journey around and about South East Asia. We started out where few dare to go in Burma. If you're confused, the militaristic dictatorship there changed the name to Myanmar, but it's often still referred to as Burma so as not to grant any authenticity to the dark and dangerous government currently and illegitimately in power.

We spent 2 weeks in that hot, beautiful place where the going is rough but the people are kind. We visited Yangon, Mandalay, Inle Lake, Kalaw, and Bagan. It was one of the most rewarding parts of our trip, but also the most difficult.


We've got a lot of catching up to do, so it's light on words and heavy on pictures.

A note on ethical travel in Burma:
Amazingly, it's fairly easy to prevent most of your money from going into government hands. If you take privately owned buses, stay in privately owned guest houses, and sneak around the back way to temples with government fees then the only money that you send directly their way is your visa fee, entrance to Bagan and entrance to Inle Lake. We were conflicted whether or not to go, but having been I highly encourage travelers to visit. You'll support the people living off the tourism trade and you'll protect them with your presence. You'll hear people's stories first hand (highly illegal and dangerous for the local telling it, but very common) and see what pictures can't show you. But you should read the pros and cons and decide what you are personally comfortable with. The Burmese themselves say come.

Just Created the Blog

This weekend we went to Micki and Levi's wedding in Decatur - a lot of fun and very nice. Jess was a bridesmaid and did a great job carrying flowers and looking pretty n stuff. This was our last weekend in Decatur for a while - sad but we've got adventures aplenty coming up this summer. Only a week left before new york. We leave next Tuesday, get back Thursday, I work my last day on Friday and then its off to the trail on June 1st. We are working on our final preparations now (menu items, mail drops, tentative schedule etc). If anyone wants to meet up with us please do. The trail crosses roads at so many places that it is very easy to meet up, hike for a while and then get shuttled back to your car. We plan on taking a lot of pictures while on the trail and posting them on this blog, but we probably wont be doing this a whole lot because we'll have limited access to computers (hurray). Whenever we stay at a hostel we will have a chance to upload pictures and keep everyone updated. I'm posting a picture so I can figure out how it works. More to come.